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Books

I'm
pleased to announce the winners of the last couple of book giveaways.
In return for receiving the book, the winners have been offered an
opportunity to write a guest post about what they learn so the wisdom
can be shared.

If you were not one of the lucky winners, don't give up. I have a
stack of books that I'm hoping to give away in the coming weeks - all
social media related.

Earlier this year, our nonprofit ventured into the social media waters by starting a blog. Outside of time, our small department launched the blog at virtually no
cost. We checked out library books on building and maintaining a blog,
taught ourselves some basic web design techniques – again from library
books and online articles – and chose a free blog hosting service.

Our cause, providing free after-school training for children with
dyslexia, encompasses centers spread across several states. The blog
launch came in the midst of the economic crisis when these centers were
facing unprecedented fundraising challenges. Our goal was to provide
center staff and their volunteer boards with fundraising tips,
inspiration and the opportunity to feel connected to headquarters and
other volunteers. We got into a rhythm of doing three posts a week and
have been posting faithfully since May.

We saw the real value of the blog when we began using it to provide
information on a proposed name change for our charity. Through a
rebranding study we had all but settled on a new name, but the negative
feedback we received through the blog alerted us to regional problems
with our choice that we never would have thought of ourselves. The
issue sparked good dialogue among our volunteers, brought our highest
readership numbers yet, and showed supporters that we were listening
when we chose to rule out the name choice completely.

With our 100th post coming at the close of this year, our staff
would agree that the blog has been a great success. We haven’t
attempted Twitter yet, but if we win the book we might just give it a
try!

My secret for rocking the social webs for the nonprofit I work for - Colorado Children's Immunization Coalition @ImmunizeCOKids - is real relationships. I cultivate real relationships with the people that follow/fan/subscribe us by interacting with them, asking them to post on behalf of our cause and keeping them informed on the latest news. It can seem overwhelming but it's critical for NGOs to build real connections. Our only commodity is people so we have to foster those people on the other end of the social media ID.

This book sounds fantastic. Our congregation is just beginning to dig in with analytics after seven years of flying by the seat of our pants. And now that we have two blogs (and hope to begin a "Social Sermon" in the spring, we are beginning to formulate a general strategy and policy for engaging our members, potential members and fellow travelers through social media. Hope to learn more from Avinash

Earlier this month, I participated in a social media library giveaway organized by Steve Cunningham, who like me, loves books. He writes a blog called "Read It To Me" that summarizes business books and also hosts Webinars with authors. This weekend I participated in a Webinar about the book The Whuffie Factor along with author Tara Hunt where we discussed how the ideas apply to nonprofits.

My social media plans for 2010 involve 1) developing my own knowledge
and skill set, 2) helping to develop a strategy for my organization-
Metro United Way in Louisville, KY - and 3) teaching within my
organization to develop the knowledge and skills of others.

I believe my new library will help me achieve all three things by prompting me to:- FOCUS my personal learning in social media.- ADAPT my existing social media strategy based on the new things I learn and ideas I have as a result of reading the books.-
GIVE BACK by reporting out on what I have learned and how I am using
the books, both internally (within my org.) and externally (with all of
your fine readers!).

Or, if I had to say it in a haiku:

GETTING A NEW SOCIAL MEDIA LIBRARY [title]

If you share with me,I will listen, learn, adapt,AND reciprocate!

When I announced the contest, I thought there was one important book missing, Shel Israel's Twitterville. So I said I'd kick in my copy. Brian Reich author of Media Rules left a comment offering to include a copy of his book. In addition, I'm sending the winner my review copy of Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation because I think she can learn a lot from Chapter 14 on Participation 2.0.

What I propose to do with the library you are offering is read it,
try it, share it, and let you know how it works for me, my colleagues
and the people we influence. I am the director of a non-profit
that promotes open museum practices, and we are in midst of launching a
free service for arts organizations: a web site that permits any museum
to create a participatory exhibit space and social network centered on
the museum's collections. As you know, it takes more than access
to create a successful social media network. It takes content, strategy
and elbow grease.

So if we are lucky
enough to win this library, we'll read it, share it and put it through
a workout with a variety of collaborators, and we'll show our
appreciation by pointing to your books, citing your ideas and telling
you how it goes.

A Few Whuffie Winners!

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to participate in a Webinar organized by Steve Cunningham with Tara Hunt about her book, The Whuffie Factor. I purchased a copy as soon as it was available last May. It's been my bible for community and relationship building. I keep a copy of the checklist on pages 158-159 from the book right by computer.

The most interesting part of webinars is the q/a and Tara got an interesting question about how you measure Whuffie and she wrote her reflection here. I have a some thoughts I'll add in a separate post.

Claire Murray who works with Malden, MA's anti-poverty agency, providing advocacy,
community organizing, pro bono legal assistance, housing assistance,
fuel assistance, weatherization, child care, Head Start, free financial
education and tax preparation, even special "matched" savings accounts
so people can develop assets, signing them up for health care and food
stamps, and a walk-in computer center for access to and training in the
technology. She has been using blogs in the computer walk-in center since 2005 (through a technical assistance grant with the CNET, I worked with them back in 2005).

Lana Kraus is the youth engagement specialist for the Kansas Family Partnership who is using social media to build out their online resources library for substance abuse prevention. The longer-term goal is to be a resource to other agencies that participate in the partnership.

FLYyouthDC is creating a social media plan using the WeAreMedia wiki. For
2010, they want to build relationships
with past volunteers, youth clients, family members, donors, and other
supporters. "Like many nonprofits these days, decreased
foundation support means we're really struggling financially. Because
of this, our other big goal is to get back to grassroots fundraising,
not only to help us get through these hard times, but to also create a
continuous stream of funds by offering multiple ways for people to
donate and to share who we are. Of course, being in touch with our
supporters in so many ways means we'll also be able to thank them in
just as many ways!" This is a youth-run organization that works in the DC area.

Johanna Bates, who has worked for a community organization in Massachusetts that will close its doors at the end of year, will venture in the world of consulting. Johanna Bates is one of the smartest nonprofit technologists out there who has a wide range of skills including social media and so many other technical talents I can't remember. I know Johanna is a very generous person and has volunteered for the NTEN NTC Conference annual day of service (see a photo of her climbing a ladder in a community center in New Orleans to help install a wireless network).

If you're reading this and you left a comment and didn't win a book, don't be sad. I'll be doing some more book giveaways during the holidays. I have a big stack of review copies of books and can't wait to share some brief reviews and then give them away!

You can win a this set of books, signed and personalized by the authors that will teach you how to be human through your computer, generate tons of social capital, and be a social media virtuoso - plus have some great books to curl up with during the holidays.

Here’s how you win:

1. Leave a comment below telling me your
social media plans for 2010, and why you think these 7 books will help
you achieve what you want to accomplish. Best comment in within the
next week wins the set.

2. Visit one of the following blogs who
have the same set of books to give away. If you really want to
increase your chances of winning, you’ll probably want to visit each of
them and leave a comment there as well. Here’s where to go (if the
blog post is not up yet, check back later in the day):

www.kaushik.net/avinash:
this is the amazing blog of Web 2.0 Analytics author Avinash Kaushik.
He’s simply the smartest guy in the world when it comes to analytics
and what it means for your business.

www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog:
this is the blog of John Jantsch, THE expert on small business
marketing. He’s also writes probably the most practical, hands-on
marketing blog on the planet. It’s a must-read.

Note from Beth: Last May, Mark Pescue published a provocative essay called the "Tower and the Clouds" which talked about the tension between working in traditional, hierarchical nonprofits and the "cloud" like behavior of working with social media. Much of the my reflections and noodling on this idea has been around how existing nonprofits balance these two approaches. But what about those freeagent activists who have worked outside of the formal structure of a 501c-3. Should they establish a nonprofit for their work to support growth? Could this be a new type of nonprofit or not?

I asked this question of Manny Hernandez, founder of (TuDiabetes.com in English and EsTuDiabetes.com in Spanish). His online communities are the most tech-savvy of the independent diabetes communities: Hernandez built it on social networking platform Ning, the company at which he worked before starting these online communities and his nonprofit. As of today TuDiabetes has almost 10,800 members and EsTuDiabetes has almost 5,400.

Manny answered my question with a fantastic post titled "How To Create Social Change Without Forming a 501-c3" to run as a guest post on this blog. It's filled with good advice on this topic. In a follow up email, I asked him to share his story and describe the benefits and challenges of being a 501-c3 created in the social media cloud.

We started our communities in 2007, more than a year before we started the nonprofit. We decided to become a nonprofit in early 2008 and formed the Diabetes Hands Foundation in April 2008. I wasn't familiar with the concept of a fiscal sponsor at that point (Heck! I wasn't familiar with SO many things back then -and I learn something new about nonprofits almost every day): I would have probably otherwise pursued a fiscal sponsorship much earlier. People have a natural tendency to fear relinquishing control and that can be a barrier for some people who could otherwise benefit a lot from working under a fiscal sponsor. In tough times like this, it's so critical to focus on the core of your mission that any support you can receive, such as the one that comes with being a fiscally sponsored project as explained in the interview with Melanie, is something to consider very seriously.

Working as a nonprofit with an active presence in the social media cloud comes with its benefits. One of the benefits of being a nonprofit is the support you get from people: whether it's financial or emotional - something as simple as retweet of your message on Twitter. When people sense that you are working for a good cause without the goal of making a profit, they come forward and help. That is incredibly fulfilling: almost as fulfilling as seeing a testimonial from someone whom your community has been able to help. And because of the ease of taking action in social media (whether it is through posting a comment, making a micro-donation or sharing something with you friends), the ability for people to help your organization grows exponentially.

One of the things that can get in the way when you work as a nonprofit is that you need to be much more mindful of who you partner with and how you partner with them. Since we started as a nonprofit, lots of groups (some nonprofit, some for profit) have approached us with ideas, projects, etc. to partner around. Typically we embrace most nonprofit proposals we receive to some extent (we can't obviously be all things to all people) but when we're approached by a for profit group, we need to assess the social benefit that our members and all those affected by our work would derive from us partnering with such a group and we need to partner in ways that are central to our mission as a nonprofit (to connect people touched by diabetes and raise diabetes awareness) while we are careful not to endorse or promote products or services. Given the acknowledgement by business at large of the importance of social media as a means of getting the word out about their products and services, nonprofits that are or are becoming social media savvy need to be mindful of this, to avoid making unnecessary and costly mistakes.

Note from Beth:Simplicity is a good thing and it's been a theme of the book I'm co-writing with Allison. The
array of social media can appear to be very complex. But social media
and social networks respond to the same needs that drive people; the
need to connect with one another in meaningful ways through
conversation. Social change happens through conversations, and the job
of nonprofits is to organize themselves in such ways as to catalyze and
manage those conversations.

Organizations that can really adapt and use social media need to simplify. Simplicity boils down to:

1. Identify the essential2. Network the rest

It's
about letting go - the staff or the organization doesn't have to do it
all. It's also about having the ability to stop doing programs or
activities that don't work. It's also about streamlining
decision-making and being more nimble.

A few weeks ago, I asked for your stories about how organization's simplify or are designed to be simple from the get go. This post, from David Venn, was one of the responses.

I’ve been a communications professional in the field of adolescent mental health for over two years now. The way I think about audiences and communication has been transformed due to a better understanding of the concept of simplicity. I realized that I could listen to other organizations working on adolescent mental health, build relationships, collaborate, and ultimately reach more people with less effort.

My communications efforts were focused solely on getting our audiences to see what we were doing; visit our website; listen to our message. I was acting like a self-absorbed three-year-old on a trampoline – “Look at me! Look at me!” Sure I was communicating, but the result was that few people were listening.

Armed with a better understanding of social media and the tools, I realized I didn’t need to blast out our message to everyone at once all the time. I started listening to youth, parents, and health professionals already using the social media who were passionately engaged in our issues, not necessarily our organization.

I also discovered that I could use listening to build collaborative connections to other organizations via the social web, both locally and nationally. I no longer felt alone. I was working with an informal network of organizations that had resources and reach beyond our organization’s capacity and were also focused on our same issues.

I learned that if other groups were pulling like us, weren’t we all just playing a big game of tug-o-war.

So I dropped the rope and started pushing.

I became less concerned with the content that I was creating and started listening to the conversations that our audience and similar organizations were engaged in. I put less emphasis on one-way communications like websites, newsletters and press releases, and focused on more two-way mediums like blogging, Facebook and face-to-face exchanges. I also set up RSS feeds and bookmarking tools to monitor the work of other organizations I was interested in.

Instead of trying to find ways to “pull” other people and organizations to into our world, I began to focus on how I could “push” youth mental health into theirs. I stopped communicating and started collaborating!

I began to explore innovative ways to integrate our message with the work of other organizations I discovered through listening, even those that were not directly connected to youth mental health. For example, our team partnered with the ViewFinders International Film Festival for Youth and started an animation camp that allowed young people to create films about mental health problems. The films were premiered at the festival and we shared the animation creations on YouTube and through our blog.

Our team also worked with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to develop a youth mental health strategy. Through our shared networks we developed a community on Facebook for people who were passionate about youth mental health and who wanted to share their values in the creation of a policy document.

In addition to feeling a new found excitement about connecting with other organizations through the social web, we are developing, our approach also has another unexpected benefit – simplicity. That allows us to work in this networked way. We don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. We’re able to accomplish much more than by operating in a silo. We are able to focus on what we know best – youth mental health – and our partner organizations bring their best assets to the table.

Sometimes the best way to move forward requires you to step back, drop the rope and reflect on a few questions:

What organizations can you engage in that you haven’t already explored?

What are they doing on the social web? How can you work together?

What unique resources does your organization have that you can share with your partners?

How can you simplify your communication efforts by using social media?

How can you start to make the shift from “me’ to “we”?

David Venn works as a Communications Advisor with the Sun Life Financial Chair in Adolescent Mental Health where he is dedicated to enhancing the mental health and well-being of young people.

Note from Beth: A few weeks ago I published a post called "How To Be Human Through Your Computer" where I summarized a number of posts talking about. The idea comes from a new book by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith called Trust Agents. Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Blog has a summary of the four principles in the book that apply to nonprofits. I focused on the Archimedes principle (also from the book) in my recent presentation at Mashable. Frank Barry takes the idea of Trust Agents down to practice in the following guest post.

I’ve been reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. What’s it about you ask? “Using the web to build influence, improve reputation, and earn trust”. It’s written with a focus on business relationships, but everything is applicable to the nonprofit space. Corporations and nonprofits will benefit. The core message is all about building trust on the social web and it’s filled with practical ideas and tactics that nonprofits should be thinking about based on where the internet is headed

So what’s a Trust Agent? The book takes 260 pages to define it. I’ll give you the short version.

“Digital natives using the web to be genuine and to humanize their business (or nonprofit)”

1) Passionate

Chris and Julien don’t directly talk about passion, but it’s threaded into everything you read. You see, without passion it’s impossible to be a Trust Agent. If you don’t have passion people will see right through you. If you don’t have passion in the nonprofit space people will be less likely to give, volunteer and serve. Remember, your passion rubs off on others and so does your lack of passion. Trust Agent’s are passionate about what they do.

Education is at the core of what Chris and Julien are doing – they’re teaching people how to be Trust Agents. In the same way you need to be educated and able to educate others as a nonprofit Trust Agent. It’s important to know what your organization is all about, how it’s making an impact, where it’s work is being done and who it’s helping. It’s also important that you be able to help others understand these things through the social web. Each of these goes hand in hand with being a trusted source online. You’ve got to be able to help others know you.

3.) ConnectedThree principals are used to help shape how you think of connection on the social web – Being “One of Us”, Gaining and using “Leverage” and becoming “Agent Zero”. I won’t go into to much detail because you should read the book to get all the dirt, but let me touch briefly on each as it relates to nonprofits.

One of us refers to immersing your self in the social web. Having a hang out or regular place where others know who you are, interact with you and see you regularly is an important step in building your online reputation. As a nonprofit it’s important to have an active presence on the web. Make Facebook you home base. Blog regularly. Engage with people on Twitter. Do what ever makes sense for you, but don’t sit around and do nothing. It takes time to earn our trust and respect by become one of us so get on it.

Leverage refers to using your success in one area to influence another. If you’re a successful nonprofit with a large brand or following use that to help build your online presence quickly. Leverage the relationships with people who are already online to help you become a trusted source more quickly. You can also think about this from the perspective of empowering your supporters to leverage their networks because of their passion for your case. Beth Kanter demonstrated this live at Gnomedex.

Agent Zero refers to being at the center of a network. The one who brings others together. Who connects people…Who shares tirelessly…Who continuously helps. As a nonprofit online it should be your mission to become agent zero for your network. You have supporters who are online. Help them get to know each other and support each other. You have donors online. Thank them. Share good news with them. You have volunteers online. Help them see how their work is making an impact. Connect them with other ways to get involved. In short, be the one who’s building a network of people who can help you change the world!

Its part of the Trust Agents definition, but what does it really mean? Being a digital native means you’ve grown up with digital and online technologies. You we’re born using a computer, talking on a cell phone and browsing the Internet. You can text with your eyes closed and you wouldn’t know what to do without your iPhone. Nonprofits need people like this because the world is continuing to do more and more online. Having people on staff who have grown up in this type of world is much different than having people who have been adopted into the world through learning things as they’ve come along. For those who grew up in the digital world it’s second nature to interact on the web in a human way – reflexive almost. These types of individuals are the ones who will help you succeed on the social web.

At the heart of a Trust Agent is a longing to keep things human focused and personal. A Trust Agent cares. It’s as simple as that. The nonprofit space is filled with people who care about something. Most wouldn’t be involved if it wasn’t for their desire to see things change out of the care they have for their cause. As a Trust Agent you have to figure out how to demonstrate your care in an online world where human interaction is void.

Trust agents are helpful people. They want to share information freely. They want to help others succeed. They want to be there when someone is in need. They want to help their network of people online feel connected and taken care of. If you’re a nonprofit organization that’s always around to help others, you’ll go a long way with on the social web.

The book’s filled with ton’s more great insights and ideas. The six above aren’t even part of the core seven concepts Brogan and Smith discuss. You’ve got a lot to look forward to. Did I mention that it’s a NY Times bestseller?

Note from Beth: If you've read this far, here's a surprise for you. I'm giving away my second copy of Trust Agents. Leave a comment telling me how you think your nonprofit displays the qualities of a Trust Agent.

Frank is a Managing Consultant at Blackbaud - Internet Solutions. He Blogs at http://www.netwitsthinktank.com, regularly speaks at nonprofit conferences and loves to see how technology helps nonprofits further their mission.

I went to see the conversation with Jacqueline Novogratz at the Paley Center and wrote a summary of the discussion on my blog.
I would love to read the text that she has been working on for 10
years. The Acumen Fund's projects are inspiring and a great model for
social entrepreneurs around the world.

She was recently accepted to be a Kiva Fellow and starting this October, and will be volunteering in Latin America for 6 months with two of Kiva's partner.

Hildy Gottlieb’s new book The Pollyanna Principles is a handbook for starting a revolution in social benefit organization design and practice, but it isn’t the revolution. What’s the catch? Well, it is going to take everyone, whether you are part of an organization or receive services from one, whether you are a philanthropist or a volunteer, whether you work for a for-profit business or are a community member. For social benefit organizations to truly “work” we all need to be part of the design, the process, the success.

“When we assume we are separate, we build systems that reinforce that separateness. When we assume we are interconnected and interdependent, we build systems that reinforce those connections."

The Six Pollyanna Principles

There are six core statements that represent The Pollyanna Principles and they include:

We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.

Each and everyone of us is creating the future, every day, whether we do so consciously or not.

Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.

“Being the change we want to see” means walking the talk of our values.

Strength build upon our stengths, not our weaknesses.

Individuals will go where systems lead them.

The Pollyanna Principles boil down to a similar premise I have blogged about before: we are creating organizations that

are vested in the social issues they work towards ending in such a way that they require those issue to persist

are built in a bubble

are consistently missing opportunities to succeed by operating like a business (with competition) instead of as a living part of the community.

You can find previous blog posts (with great conversations in the comments) here, here and here.

Why I’m excited about The Pollyanna Principles

We have a huge opportunity before us to remodel our social benefit organization structure. There is so much talk both online and offline, from inside organizations and from outside, that “nonprofits are broken.” We’ve done step 1: admitted that we have a problem. Now, what? Well, as Hildy explains, we need to start driving our work with our vision of how we want the world to be, instead of what the problems are before us. What does that mean? Well, imagine that your organization said you wanted to have a public education system in your state that provided opportunities for all students to learn, fair pay for both teachers and staff, opportunities for growth for students, teachers and staff, and an entry point for all students to enter the “real world” prepared. You can imagine that by operating under that vision (instead of focusing on drop-out rates, teacher pay scales, or job skill training) that partnerships with the community, new opportunities for learning exchanges and career paths, and much more start to take shape organically, naturally.

Collaboration is a huge focus of mine: Finding ways for organizations working in the same sector to share calls to action to amplify the impact, helping organizaitons understand where their work aligns to cross pollinate across their networks, and so forth. Reading the Pollyanna Principles was like finding a twin I had been separated from at birth! But, that isn’t to say it’s the complete conversation. This is truly a great starting place from which we can all move the conversation forward.

There are still many questions I have and that I imagine all organizations, boards, volunteers, community members will have when they read the book. But I want to, am ready to, ask those questions and answer them as a community. Questions like:

How do we truly create community planning opportunities as funders that include all members of the community when the “community” of interested people is often limited to the grantee pool?

How do we begin to change the cultural view of nonprofits in society/by the community so that the public, those who use the services or are otherwise affected by nonprofits’ work can have a stake in the responsibility to create organizations making real change and all of the community is shaping its future?

How do we help organizations redefine their “community” to understand the entire ecosystem in which they operate?

And many more...

What’s Next

The Pollyanna Principles is about social benefit organizations, but it’s really about community. Community is the most important thing to me, and I truly believe that we can’t create any amount of change, any amount of real world impact, or any lasting effects without participation, ownership, and shared responsibility by community members in the work these organizations do. This means we have to have community members represented in building and implementing an organization’s work, as well as building grant programs from funders. We need to have those receiving the services and those delivering them in constant collaboration. We need people in the community to expect organizations to succeed and take a stake in making sure they do.

So, what’s stopping us from doing this? Hildy says it’s the Culture of Can’t that we are all accustomed to operating within that holds us back. Can we move to the Culture of Can? Are we ready? What are the Can’ts holding you or your organization back?

I’m ready to start: to start asking questions and coming up with answer, to think and share collaboratively, and to really focus on the vision we share for a better world and work towards that goal instead of focusing only on the problems - are you? I’d love to hear your ideas!

Maddie Grant from Social Fish sent me a link to their training 'Buzz2009 Social Media for Associations" on July 9th in Washington, DC featuring presenters Guy Kawasaki and Andy Sernovitz. She asked me if I would write about it or Tweet it. She included a handy "retweet" link. (I asked how she did that and she pointed me over to these simple how-to instructions).

I get a lot of requests like this and I don't have the capacity blog or tweet them all. However, I tweeted her message and now I'm blogging about it. Why? Because I have a relationship with Maddie. We've gotten to know each other through our respective blogs, I follow her Twitter stream, we retweet each others links, we've met face-to-face and had drinks together. She didn't just come out the blue and ask me to do something for her - and there's been a history reciprocity.

Allison Fine and I have been noodling with an evaluation model that looks social media from an organizational perspective - from social networks to social capital (relationships) to action in the real world. We've been calling it "Listening and Learning Loops." We've placed relationships as an outcome or result using the techniques of listening, learning, reflection, micro-planning, and adapting. Now I'm wondering where the techniques of engagement need to be incorporated.

Listening is not just a one-way activity. It eventually shifts to two-way conversation. Dave Fleet shares a rubric of going from not listening to engaging in conversation to build a relationship. It's called "Five Level of Social Media Response." It's quite funny.

True listening - active listening - involves more than just nodding your head at the right time. It means absorbing what people are saying, acting where appropriate, and letting people know when you’ve acted.

But these ideas about relationships and engagement are looking at from the point of view of marketing, fundraising, and advocacy. How can we look at this from an networked organization perspective?

This slide shows the different type of relationships and shift in thinking. How do you go from treating your donors like ATM machines and turn them into passionate, loyal, and constant supporters? And, that's the problem with how some online fundraising campaigns and applications are designed - they are transactional - vote for me, give me ten dollars, etc.

Charlene lays out four strategies. Learning is a combination of listening and learning. The listening piece is the monitoring and tracking and Charlene Li points out that there is no one right approach to monitoring. The big challenge is turning the river of noise into insight. Charlene's model incorporates what Allison and I have been noodling around with and calling "Micro-Planning" and what Charlene called "flexible, fast learning." She makes some points about how to improve learning:

Determine where fast, flexible learning is most needed to support business goals

Figure out who you need to listen to, and where they are

Find out who is best at listening to that audience

Hint: It’s probably not Market Research

The dialog is the engagement piece, help is using these tools to provide customer service, and the innovate is the process of getting crowd sourced feedback to create new programs or products.

These points also make me think about an organizational listening/learning model. The culture change in nonprofit organizations to embrace this is significant. It is going to be harder for those organizations that haven't taken the first step.

My questions:

What are the opportunity costs of not thinking of relationships and engagement on a holistic organizational level?

Can organizations that are younger and have embraced the cloud-like way of working - will they have a better chance of survival in the longer term because they can more easily embrace these ways of working?

I'm not sure that I have formally announced that Allison Fine and I are working on a book (here's her blog post). The book will take a look at how social media is facilitating a shift from organization to working in a more networked way. It will also include some practical advice about working more like clouds than towers.

We've been working on what started out as the a chapter on Metrics and ROI. The more we noodled, the more we realized that financial frameworks were not right. Now we've transformed into the concept of learning and listening loops. Last week, Allison had a chance to test some of our thinking at the Games for Change conference.

As chair of the chart committee, I had originally diagrammed this concept as the rungs of the ladder of engagement - see it here. Since we're calling it learning loops, seems like circles were more in order. And because listening and learning more techniques versus outcomes - and techniques that you need to use continuosly, those became the dotted links knitting the outcomes together.

We did a riff on KD Paine SobCon ROI of Relationships in Social Media that I covered on my blog earlier this month. We adapted it for social change. KD Paine's framework illustrates a ladder of engagement that moves people from Social Networks to Engagement to Relationship to Return on Investment. Online Social networks generate social capital (relationships - reciprocity and trust) which lead to on the ground change.

The dashed line with arrows represents the ongoing listening and learning loops - which are micro planning, listening, metrics, reflection, and reiteration. I've written endlessly about the techniques of listening, metrics, reflection and reiteration.

But, Allison made up a new term, "micro-planning." Which is more like Margaret Wheatly's naturalistic planning. Social media has spawned a lot of new words starting with the word “micro.” On the tools side, we have micro formats, micro blogging, micro media, and more. In the nonprofit sector, we have micro-fundraising (giving small amounts of money on social networks like Twitter). Allison mentions a few more like mico-finance like Kiva's small loans to entrepreneurs here and abroad.

In a session at the Web 2.0 Expo in April, Charlene Li, Peter Kim, and Jeremiah Owyang pointed out several problems with corporate social media, specifically the concept of a campaign. Micro-planning is important because, as Charlene Li said, “The problem is using the word campaign. This is not something you turn on and off, but a relationship that you’re building.”

We are trying to illustrate a real-time, lighter assessment process that activists can use to engage their community and make real-time improvements and adjustments. Because social media can lend itself to low-cost experimentation, this process doesn't not necessarily require the "grand campaign plan" that takes a year and lots of resources to implement.

It's a shift in thinking and approach. So, here are my questions:

How do you do micro-planning that doesn't take on an "unplanned" or "random" approach?

How do you do micro-planning that isn't just about picking low hanging fruit and doesn't have impact?

How do you plan strategically in short bursts and make changes in real-time without getting bogged down in the making the planning perfect?

How do we shift away from the concept of "campaigns"?

How do we make that culture shift in our organizations?

What is the recipe or step-by-step for doing this successfully?

Most importantly, I am looking for some examples from nonprofits. The P&G Loads of Hope experiment described by David Armano is the is probably one of the better examples. The closest nonprofit example I've found is from the HSUS in this post that talks about the 9 minute daily meetings.

Do you have an example to share? What are your thoughts about the concept of micro planning and it's use in social media?

The Smithsonian Institution is in the midst of a huge strategic planning effort, with new media as one of the focal points for its future. It looks like their strategic planning process is being extended by the social web, going beyond the traditional flip charts and chocolate chip cookies of all-day planning retreats. While they may be also be doing focus groups and surveys, it looks like they've added a research channel: YouTube.

They're doing some crowdsourcing via their YouTube Channel. The Smithsonian has opened the conversation up to the world and is inviting people to submit a one-minute video sharing their vision for the Institution's future. The question they're asking:

Given the news ways of acquiring and sharing knowledge through
technology: the internet, social networking, video
sharing, and cell phones—where do you see the Smithsonian's museums and
websites going in the future? How can we make education more relevant
to you in a digital age?

There's a handful of videos already submitted and just gotta love this one with the baby.

The text of the invitation on YouTube is as follows:

We're looking for a few friends and fans from around the world to help
us form the future Smithsonian experience. A revolutionary Web and New
Media Strategy project is underway, and we invite you to collaborate
with us as we envision a rich new media future for the Institution.

They're asking folks to join this YouTube group and submit a one-minute video by June 30th. I wonder who they are reaching out to, why they selected YouTube (are there other places where people who are interested in the future of the Smithsonian gather?), are they reaching out to new media professionals as well as others?

It will be interesting to see how they summarizing the feedback and illustrate how they plan to incorporate it into their strategic planning.

Update: Found some additional materials from Nina Simond at Museum 2.0

Video of her lecture here.
Conversation about this on the WestMuse Blog in the comments. There was a response from someone at the Smithsonian who answered Dave Cormier's query about why they are doing it and how to nurture the conversation.

The Voice Your Vision Project is just one more facet of the overall
info gathering process. Video contribution seemed like a potentially
engaging way to gather some public input, and YouTube was an easy place
to set it up. This wasn’t a heavily analyzed endeavor, just another
little piece of the puzzle.

The process has been designed to be very wide open within the
Institution, so this seemed a easy and fun way to gather some input
from the outside using New Media.

Nothing cynical, and no worry about losing funding. The Secretary is
a Social Media booster. However, getting an institution as large as
ours to undertake an integrated approach to New and Social Media is a
big task. Building our systems from the ground up to both meet the
internal needs of our researchers and other specialists while still
filtering up to meet the needs of our constituents via our websites and
our presence on an ever widening array of external social sites is
going to take a lot of resources. We need begin to get a view from a
lot of perspectives, and this is just one more slice of the pie.

So, not only are they opening up a two-way conversation, they are using social media best practices: listening and experimenting. Also being very transparent.

The post is an overview on this theme and I am looking for stories about how your organization's use of social media has changed the way your organization works. Not just fundraising and marketing, but programs, leadership, management, and organizational structure. How are you becoming a more networked nonprofit?

If you're wondering why I've been a little scattered lately, it is because I'm about five weeks away from moving 3,000 miles across the country. This has been no small task - closing up a house we've occupied for twenty years, finding a new place to live and the right schools, and countless other details. All in the backdrop of cross-country commuting, getting acclimated to a new working environment and systems, and the added stimulus of everything being unfamiliar.

A big move forces you to let go, pare down to essentials. The less stuff you move, the cheaper the moving costs. I've been looking at everything I own with a question - "How essential is this?"

Take for example, my vast book collection which I've accumulated over the last thirty years. (Okay, I confess I'm a book addict) Unfortunately, books are heavy and when moving costs are based on weight, well, sadly, I had to say good bye to a lot my friends. Over the past couple of months, I've been shipping them off various nonprofit libraries, friends, and doing giveaways on the blog. The batch of books in the photo above found a new home at In Defense of Animal and Funding Information Center in Texas.

Simplicity is a good thing.

As you may have read on Allison Fine's blog, we are co-writing a book to be published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley & Sons early next year. It's tentatively called the networked nonprofit and is how nonprofits can work more like clouds.
As we've been discussing different themes in the book, the concept of simplicity is a good starting point.

The array of social media can appear to be very complex. But social media and social networks respond to the same needs that drive people; the need to connect with one another in meaningful ways through conversation. Social change happens through conversations, and the job of nonprofits is to organize themselves in such ways as to catalyze and manage those conversations.

Organizations that can really adapt and use social media need to simplify. Simplicity boils down to:

1. Identify the essential2. Network the rest

It's about letting go - the staff or the organization doesn't have to do it all. It's also about having the ability to stop doing programs or activities that don't work. It's also about streamlining decision-making and being more nimble. It's about a lot more things, but I'm hoping you will share your thoughts on that in the comments.

I got a few responses when I asked for examples via Twitter. Meghan Keaney, United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, responded

One act of simplicity for us is a new freedom around letting volunteers, supporters and advocates drive for a bit. Giving them the tools to speak on our behalf and having a channel through which they can provide feedback and have a hand in our decisions. All of this is pretty new, but moving along very quickly. I think we are rethinking volunteerism and advocacy to include e-based volunteer projects and message carrying even if that message isn’t exactly on brand.

So, do you have a story about how your organization has embraced simplicity in its quest to use social media?

The GiveList is great idea from Allison Fine and Marnie Webb
that is encouraging conversation and other ways to give contributions
that aren't cash to charitable causes. The idea is that even if times
are bad, you don't have to be stingy. In the last week since the
project launched, there's been a firehose of ideas for giving that don't require getting out your checkbook or credit card and cringing.

Book Giveaway: Tom Watson, author of the new book, CauseWired, kindly gave me a copy for a book giveaway. If you didn't win and you don't already own it, it's a must read. And if budgets are tight, you might be able to pick up a used version on Amazon. Or, if you're a US blogger and participated in Blog Action Day you be lucky enough to get an email from Kiva B2B that they are giving away 300 hundred copies to participant bloggers.

If you read my review of Causewired or any one of the many thumbs up reviews, and your book buying budget is a little tight right now, Tom Watson was kind enough to give me a copy of his new book, CauseWired to give away on this blog. All you have to do is leave a comment saying why you want the book by November 17th and on November 21st, I'll pick a winner using random.org.

And, then I can play another Akoha card that suggests I give someone a book!